An introduction to technology integration — from edutopia.org
Excerpt:
Integrating technology with classroom practice can be a great way to strengthen engagement by linking students to a global audience, turning them into creators of digital media, and helping them practice collaboration skills that will prepare them for the future. Read a short introductory article.
Active listening: A primer — from opensesame.com by Christina Gremore
Excerpt:
In the business world, long-term success hinges on excellent active listening skills. Many people mistake active listening for passively taking notes during a presentation, or worse – they think of ‘listening’ as ‘waiting quietly for their turn to speak.’. True active listening requires practice, patience, and engagement. It involves considering the speaker’s intentions, the context of the situation, and sometimes even what is not being said.
Looks like a very interesting set of tools/technologies out at livefyre.com — a piece of which is subtitled, the “Web’s first Engagement Management System.”
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“Mom! Check out what I did at school today!”
If you’re a parent, don’t you love to hear the excitement in your son’s or daughter’s voice when they bring home something from school that really peaked their interest? Their passions?
I woke up last night with several ideas and thoughts on how technology could help students become — and stay — engaged, while passing over more control and choice to the students in order for them to pursue their own interests and passions. The idea would enable students to efficiently gain some exposure to a variety of things to see if those things were interesting to them — perhaps opening a way for a future internship or, eventually, a career.
The device I pictured in my mind was the sort of device that I saw a while back out at Double Robotics and/or at Suitable Technologies:
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The thoughts centered on implementing a growing network of such remote-controlled, mobile, videoconferencing-based sorts of devices, that were hooked up to voice translation engines. Students could control such devices to pursue things that they wanted to know more about, such as:
For accountability — as well as for setting aside intentional time to process the information — students would update their own blogs about what they experienced, heard, and saw. They would need to include at least one image, along with the text they write about their experience. Or perhaps a brief/edited piece of digital video or audio of some of the statements that they heard that really resonated with them, or that they had further questions on. The default setting on such postings would be to be kept private, but if the teacher and the student felt that a posting could/should be made public, a quick setting could be checked to publish it out there for others to see/experience.
Real world. Engaging. Passing over more choice and control to the students so that they can pursue what they are passionate about.
From DSC:
I’ve been trying to figure out the best ways to incorporate a BYOD/BYOT into the Smart Classroom. That is, how can students’ devices seamlessly communicate with the main displays around the classroom? How can they quickly display a blog posting or a Google doc for example…or play a song they wrote, etc. So I was excited to wake up this morning with the following concept/idea:
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Other features/thoughts:
So…what if the 4 screen’s on Julong’s Ultra-IPBOARD were coming from 4 different sources? Perhaps:
Also see:
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To boldly go where no pupils have gone before — from scienceomega.com by James Morgan
Excerpt:
The researchers behind the design of so-called ‘Star Trek classrooms’ have discovered that multi-touch, multi-user desks can boost pupils’ skills in mathematics. The inter-disciplinary team from Durham University, whose findings have been published in the journal Learning and Instruction, found evidence to suggest that children who used smart desks to complete mathematical exercises benefited more than those who completed their tasks on paper.
During the course of a three-year project known as SynergyNet, the researchers have worked with more than 400 pupils, predominantly aged between eight and 10. The team’s latest results show that collaborative learning, such as that facilitated by touchscreen desks, increases learners’ mathematical fluency and flexibility. Moreover, the researchers are confident that the technology that they have developed could also be used to improve learning across other subject areas.
Also see:
Description of video:
Stephen Harris, Principal of Northern Beaches Christian School, gives a short tour of the SCIL Building, an open-plan, multi-modal learning space for student-directed learning. The SCIL Building features spaces and furniture than foster a range of learning modes and styles.
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Engaging children with the siren call of the app — from the New York Times by Geraldine Fabrikant
Excerpt:
Each summer for several years, a two-week seminar at the American Museum of Natural History has allowed 25 youngsters to use technology to resurrect a prehistoric marine animal by designing realistic 3-D models and sea environments.
Every year, the program, “Virtual World Institute: Cretaceous Seas,” for children ages 11 to 14, fills up quickly.
An animated highlight of John Seely Brown’s Keynote Presentation, “Cultivating the Entrepreneurial Learner in the 21st Century,” at the 2012 Digital Media and Learning Conference. Published on Sep 18, 2012 by DMLResearchHub.. With thanks going out to Mr. Joseph Byerwalter for this find/resource.
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Also see:
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From DSC: I like how Jackie titles her blog:
User Generated Education
Education as it should be – passion-based.
Apple TV and the transformation of web apps into tablet and TV dual screen apps — from brightcove.com by Jeremy Allaire
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Excerpts:
Importantly, designers and developers need to shed the concept that “TVs” are for rendering video, and instead think about “TVs” as large monitors on which they can render applications, content and interactivity that is supported by a touch-based tablet application.
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The key concept here is that this pervasive adoption of TV monitors is the tip of the spear in creating a social computing surface in the real world.
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Specifically, Apple has provided the backbone for dual screen apps, enabling:
- Any iOS device (and OSX Mountain Lion-enabled PCs) to broadcast its screen onto a TV. Think of this as essentially a wireless HDMI output to a TV. If you haven’t played with AirPlay mirroring features in iOS and Apple TV, give it a spin, it’s a really exciting development.
- A set of APIs and an event model for enabling applications to become “dual screen aware” (e.g. to know when a device has a TV screen it can connect to, and to handle rendering information, data and content onto both the touch screen and the TV screen).
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[Jeremy listed several applications for these concepts: Buying a house, buying a car, doctor’s office, kids edutainment, the classroom, retail electronics store, consuming news, consuming video, sales reporting, board games.]
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Also see:
From DSC:
Graphically speaking — and approaching this from an educational/learning ecosystems standpoint — I call this, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.
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![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg "The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian---July-2012")
Related item:
Latitude looking to kids for technology innovation — from technapex.com by Caity Doyle
Excerpt:
On their website, Latitude explains why they made the interesting choice to reach out to children for new ideas in technology:
Young people shouldn’t be merely passive recipients of media and technology, as they’re often thought to be — rather, they should be active participants in imagining and creating the future of the Web. Why? Because “digital natives” have a more intuitive relationship with new technologies than many adults have, and because they have different expectations about technology. They instinctively expect it to respond to them in very human-like ways — to motivate and empower them, often serving as a sort of companion, rather than merely a tool for solving specific problems.
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From DSC:
My interest in this? All of this ultimately relates to:
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Addendum on 9/12/12:
Also see:
Sony releases first 4K TV: The 84-inch XBR-84X900 — from CNET.com by Ty Pendlebury
Sony has announced its first 4K television, the 84-inch XBR-84X900, which features a separate stereo speaker system and passive 3D viewing.
Addendum on 8/31/12 — 3 65” Presenters from Ideum
From DSC:
This relates to BYOD, Smart Classrooms, and students being able to participate and contribute content to discussions:
From DSC:
Some reflections on on David Warlick’s solid posting, I never needed to know that. First, some excerpts (emphasis DSC):
But the fact is that one reason we, as educators, do not readily recognize this compelling truth and try to make sense of its profound implications is that we can not predict what our children will need to know and not need to know. It would be nothing more than speculation.
So again, “What do our children need to be learning today?”
Several ideas spring to my mind as I try to unfold this.
- Our children need to learn something.
- What they need to learn is no longer as important as it use to be.
- Increasing the stakes on what they learn does little more than punish our children for our own arrogance.
- If what they learn today may not be useful to them tomorrow, then how will they continue to learn what is?
- How they learn has become much more important.
- Perhaps the most important thing we can help our children learn, is how to teach themselves.
I think David’s comments are right on. How students learn — and I would add enjoying learning — are very important. If I don’t like to learn, or if school is a painful experience, I will be at a huge disadvantage in life these days. Lifelong learning is now a requirement for most of us, if we want to stay marketable/employed. But if I don’t like to learn, this is going to be an uphill battle for me.
So when I approach the Common Core, or standardized tests, or questions concerning curriculum, etc….I am looking through the lenses that constantly ask the questions:
